Sunday, June 8, 2008

This summer I took on the "One Local Summer Challenge" at Farm To Philly's blog. I assumed it would be easy here where much of the land surrounding my town is still farmed. And it would be. Except my husband put a wrench in my efforts. He didn't do it on purpose, he doesn't even know that I am in the challenge.

What happen was he wanted meat this weekend. And to top it off he was willing to cook it. How could I not accept his offer? So Saturday we had steak and tonight we are having chicken, both on the grill. Well, I still have not been able to find a local meat producer. I found veggies, fruits, nuts, honey olive oil and eggs but no meat. I have to confess, the meat is from the supermarket. But it was on sale, I couldn't resist that either.

Yet all is not lost on our meals with non-local meat. The sides and marinades are mostly local, right down to the olive oil used to baste the bird. The chicken was grilled with a marinade of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, basil, parsley, and oregano (the last 3 from our garden.) And we are having baked potatoes from the farmer's market. Yesterday our grilled veggies were corn, zuchini, onion, garlic and herbs all locally grown. I did buy the red bell pepper from the market. It was left over from this week and I needed to eat it. And may I add (just so I don't get in trouble too much by breaking Farm to Philly's rules) the cherries, oranges and nectarines my daughter and I have been munching on today for snacks are all local, I even rode my bike to get the cherries.

My daughter enjoying her cherries just a little too much.

So I am sorry that the whole meal is not local. I do plan on making more than one meal a week local. I just had to learn a hard lesson-don't make the meal on the weekend when my husband wants meat.

3 comments:

Allison - I'm with ya, girl. Tomorrow I'll be posting about the local meal I attempted this weekend - complete with Purdue Chicken Nuggets! But I got some of it right, and I figure if we keep doing it week after week, by August we'll have figured out how to do it completely local.

Check out caff.org. They have a guide to local foods that includes where to find local meats. Many farmer's markets now include beef and pork if you don't want to buy directly from the farm, but chickens aren't as easy to find.

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